The 7 planetary divinities
on the mosaic gave their names to the days of the week.

A Theologian
Speaks

"The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never had any existence.

He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb."

"... Christians spent three whole centuries in constructing little by little the apotheosis of Jesus...

At first, Jesus was regarded merely as a man inspired by God, then as a creature more perfect than the others. Some time after he was given a place above the angels, as says Saint Paul. Every day added to his stature. He became an emanation of God manifested in time. That was not enough: he was held to be born before time itself. Finally he was made God, consubstantial with God."

– Voltaire, 'The Divinity of Jesus', Dictionary, vol.1, 240-241

A Professor
Speaks

"His
birth-date should be reassigned to 6 or 5 or 4 BC, though some
prefer 11 or 7...

His birthplace was not
Bethlehem ... this was only asserted in order that an Old
Testament prophecy could be fulfilled ...

Jesus Christ was probably
born at Nazareth ... or perhaps some other small place."

– Michael
Grant, Jesus, p71,171)

History
bears grim witness to the fate of brave thinkers who dared to
question the dogmas of the Church.

The Real Martyrs –

1415 Jan Hus, Czech priest and critic of "moral failings" of the Church, burnt at the stake after condemnation by the Council of Constance, which Hus had attended under promise of immunity.

1546 Etienne Dolet,
French printer and bookseller and passionate advocate of learning,
was imprisoned several times for his outspoken criticisms
of the Church.

Dolet was
condemned for atheism and burnt at Lyons, along with his books, leaving
his family destitute.

Big mistake. John
Calvin, the puritanical "Protestant
Pope" of Geneva proved his Christian credentials by having
Servetus burnt at the stake for heresy. Servetus had criticized the
Trinity
and infant baptism.

1589 Francis Kett,
a tutor at Bene't (Corpus Christi), Cambridge, expressed doubts that
JC may not have been the great moralist
Christians believed.

For his audacity the professor
was burnt to ashes.

1600 Giordano
Bruno, Italian philosopher who taught in Paris and Wittenberg, paid
the ultimate price for thinking for himself.

After languishing for 7
years in a dungeon of the Inquisition, where he was subjected to repeated
torture, he was condemned and burned at the stake.

Bruno had had the audacity
to suggest that space was boundless and that the sun and its planets
were
not unique.

1619 Lucilio Vanini (aka 'Giulio
Cesare' - 'Julius Caesar').

Philosopher,
teacher and freethinker, in 1616 the ex-Carmelite monk Vanini imprudently
published his thoughts in “De
admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis” (“of
the marvelous secrets of the queen and goddess of the mortal ones, nature."

His ideas included the possibility
of human evolution from apes and the denial of an immortal soul.

Vanini rejected Christianity
as a fiction invented by priests and argued for natural explanations
for miracles. As a result he had to
flee from place to place
to avoid Catholic persecution.

But
he was taken at Toulouse, condemned, his tongue cut out, strangled
and burnt.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
– revolutionary champion of liberty.

"I
detest the Bible as I detest everything that is cruel."

Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789) – philosopher of the Enlightenment

"The Cross was the banner under which madmen assembled to glut the earth with blood."

Bruno Bauer (1809-1882)
– the original iconoclast.

Kersey
Graves (1813-1883) – Quaker who saw through
the Jesus fraud.

Arthur Drews (1865-1935) – one of the great German pioneers in the denial of the historical existence of Jesus.

"The 'historical' Jesus is not earlier but later than Paul; and as such he has always existed merely as an idea, as a pious fiction in the minds of members of the community."

The
End is Nigh

"Not
only has the divinity of Christ been given up, but his existence
as a man is being more and more seriously questioned.

Some of the ablest scholars
of the world deny that he ever lived at all.

A commanding literature
dealing with the inquiry, intense in its seriousness and profound and
thorough in its research, is growing up in all countries, and spreading
the conviction that Christ is a myth.

Jesus
... will have to take his place with the host of other demigods whose
fancied lives and deeds make up the mythology of the world."

"Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about him."

- The philosopher Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian". (1927 lecture).

Dead Sea Scroll Scholar

In 1970 biblical scholar and Dead Sea Scroll expert John Allegro argued
for the non-existence of Jesus Christ.

Allegro's thesis associated notions
of the godman with narcotic-induced visions.

The
hallucinatory plant in question was Amanita Muscaria (Fly-Agaric),
the phallic mushroom, arguably used by early Christians and interpreted
as a virgin (i.e. seedless) birth and "God come in the flesh."

Allegro was subjected to
acrimonious fury and ostracised. He died in 1988.

High
on Jesus?

George Albert Wells

"I now think that there really was a man Jesus but that we can know very little about him." YT

Born Again
Atheist

Evangelist who "threw
out the bath water and discovered there was no baby there."

“There
is not a single contemporary historical mention of Jesus, not by
Romans or by Jews, not by believers or by unbelievers, during his
entire lifetime.

This
does not disprove his existence, but it certainly casts great doubt
on the historicity of a man who was supposedly widely known to have
made a great impact on the world. Someone should have noticed.”

"I have come to realize that mythicism is significantly more probably
true than historicity. This I consider as radical a departure from my previous
agnosticism as my agnosticism was from my previous historicism."

– Richard
Carrier, Editor-in-Chief, Internet Infidels, July 18, 2005

In the time since 2005 Carrier has become one of the leading advocates for a mythical Jesus. Probably.

Jesus
Never Existed – A crackpot idea?

In
a culture based upon Christianity the
denial of Jesus' existence may appear at
first glance absurd or even
stupid. After all, goes the argument, "mainstream scholarship" accepts
that there was a historical Jesus, even if there is no agreement
as to actually who he was, precisely when
he was, what he
did or what he said.

Fact and Fancy

Today,
New Testament scholars steer a course between two worlds, one
in which a theological Jesus ("divine son of God")
holds centre stage – but this Jesus, of course, is acknowledged
to
be a
matter of faith; and the other, "the world of a historical
Jesus".

Detailed,
often meticulous, investigation of the history, culture and
politics of
Palestine
in the second temple period creates a historically authoritative
background. Against
this background, a wafer thin construct of "Jesus" makes
his spectral appearance.

But
it is the historical context itself which allows this
phantom saviour to "live", "die" and "resurrect" and
thereby cast its
false
shadow back upon history.

"These
are the type of sandals Jesus would have worn.This is the
type of tree he would have rested under."

Inertia
of the Soft Option

Professional
historians are not necessarily engaged by any particular
interest in the issue of
Jesus – and are all too aware of its controversial
nature. A
scholar who announces that he thinks there was no historical
Jesus is likely to face scorn, even ridicule, and will
gain little for his candour.

Thus
most scholars, raised and educated in a Christian culture are
content either to assume Jesus
lived (and defer to the opinions of biblical specialists who
are often men of faith) or, given the paucity
of
evidence for a great many historical personages, preface their
uncertainty with a "probably".
It is much safer for them to aver the "probability of
a man
behind
the legend" even while arguing that layers of encrusted
myth obscure knowing anything about him.

This "safe" and
gutless option maintains simultaneously the "obscurity" of
a carpenter in an ancient provincial backwater ("absence
of evidence is not evidence of absence") and an
academic detachment from "faith issues" which raised
that supposed obscure guru to an iconic status.

A
Flawed Scenario

Yet
would, could a world-faith have arisen from a nonentity
who failed in his own lifetime to have been noticed by anyone?
How creditable is it that a wandering rabbi, who wrote nothing
himself, an also-ran in a world full of fakirs, soothsayers
and exorcists, could have cast such a spell as to have reverberated
through the ages?

A "minimalist" Jesus is actually less satisfactory than no Jesus at all because it still requires a search elsewhere for the roots of the new religion. And if the roots are to be
found elsewhere what need is there for the obscure personage anyway?

"It
is very doubtful whether the Christian faith could have
been built upon the foundations of a historic Jesus
... who was little more than a teacher of practical philosophy."

– J. Macquarrie (An Existential Theology, p23)

If
we agree that a peripatetic, rabbinic radical called Jesus,
unnoticed in the historical record, is not implausiblethen
by the same token, nor would severalsuch
Jesuses be implausible.

Which
of them would we elect to be the basis for the Christian faith
as God's "only
begotten son"? If it could have been any of them then
it was none of
them.

Either JC
was a divinity who chose to dazzle multitudes
but leave no trace, who contrived to influence – not
the Jewish people – but a mere handful of
shadowy devotees whose successors rapidly split
into numerous
warring
factions; or JC is the
fabrication of human minds, a construct betrayed
at every turn by contradiction
and omission.

Salvation
by Reason

Ironically,
it was the work of a number of liberal theologians,
rather than freethinkers, who first fractured that glorious
fabrication Jesus, Son of God, Saviour of the World.

The "received
wisdom" of the Church was first challenged during the European
Reformation, which gave legitimacy to criticism
of the papal system. Having
opened the flood gates, all religious authorities
and scripture itself were called into question and Protestantism
emerged in myriad disparate sects. But after a thousand years
of Church-enforced
ignorance "school men" had
but a small stock of real knowledge. As sinecured churchmen,
these scholars struggled to use the rediscovered tools
of logic to defend the dogmas
of
Christianity, whether of the Roman Catholic or new "pure" reformed
variety.

But after
two centuries, as the Enlightenment unfolded, brave
theologians began
to draw attention to the obvious errors and
incongruities in
accepted scripture. Why, they asked, was the New
Testament silent about most of Jesus’ life?
Why did Paul say almost nothing about the life of Jesus?

During
the American and French Revolutions freethinkers
went much further,
questioning the veracity of the entire Bible and
denouncing
Christianity as a bogus superstition and an instrument of oppression.
A new minimalist faith was born, "deism", in which
a creator god played no direct role in human affairs.

Higher Criticism

In
the century that followed a radical minority – notably,
scholars of the Tübingen School in mid-19th century Germany
and Dutch
Radical critics of the late-19th/early
20th centuries – continued
to press the case that the Christian Lord and Savior was
a pious fabrication, his whole "life",
trial and crucifixion a pastiche of verses from Jewish scripture.

To those
who looked beyond the blinkered vision of Christianity it was
very apparent that much of the Jesus tale had parallels
in much older fables, which had identical principal and
supporting characters, identical story lines, and identical moral
purpose.
Christianity, it was clear, had not fallen from
heaven but was a man-made production.

During the
20th century, rationalism, archaeology, and new techniques of
scientific investigation forced a retrenchment
upon defenders
of the faith, despite the periodic upsurges in religious
fervour. To accommodate the accumulating and undeniable
evidence
of
biblical error, variegated "lives" of
Jesus proliferated like
algae on a sun-soaked pond.

"Mainstream" New Testament
scholars, many of them committed Christians, had found a new home.
A shadowy “Jesus of history” was now held
to have existed beneath the admitted accumulated layers
of faith-based
fabrication.

Fearful
to acknowledge that both their faith and careers were built
on a monumental misconception they speculated
on any
number of
fanciful ideas – a radical rabbi Jesus, a Mediterranean
peasant Jesus, a Jesus with wife and family, a Jesus
who travelled to England,
India or Japan, a Stoic or Cynic philosopher Jesus – a
Jesus for all seasons and all tastes. A hundred
or more possible "biographies" for
the godman contended, each contriving to avoid the
obvious truth that no genuine reality underpinned
the sacred fable.

End
of Days

In
the 21st century we face the paradox that though the unmasking
of biblical
fraud has gone further than
ever
before, global
geopolitics finances and encourages a vociferous
restatement of biblical
fundamentalism and inerrancy, a torrent of misinformation,
the sheer quantity
of which can be overwhelming.

Most
people have neither time nor inclination to delve deeply
into the mass
of evidence and argument. Christian apologists
are ever-ready to denounce a "Christ-myther" as
an isolated crank on the fringes of sanity, unworthy of
serious consideration.

But
their strident hostility hides the fear that the downfall
of their superhero may not be far off. And what they
can no longer deny or suppress is the fact that the exposure
of "Jesus Christ" for the fabrication that it
is,
far from
being the manic pursuit of odd-balls, has been embraced and
endorsed by a continuous stream of talented scholars in
all countries.

Demolishing
the historicity of Jesus – A History

For
more than 200 years a minority of courageous scholars
have dared to question the story of Jesus.
Despite the risks of physical assault, professional ruin
and social
opprobrium, they have seriously doubted the veracity of
the gospel saga, have peeled away the layers of fraud
and deceit
and eventually have challenged the very existence of the
godman.

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768).1778,
On the Intention of Jesus and His Teaching. [link]
Enlightenment thinker and professor of Oriental languages
at the Hamburg Gymnasium, his extensive
writings – published after his death – rejected
'revealed religion' and argued for a naturalistic deism.
Reimarus charged the gospel writers with conscious
fraud and innumerable contradictions.

Francois
Marie Arouet (Voltaire) (1694-1778).
[link] The most influential figure of the Enlightenment was
educated at a Jesuit college yet concluded, "Christianity
is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody
religion that has ever infected the world ... The
true God cannot have been
born of a girl, nor died on a gibbet, nor be eaten
in a piece of dough." Imprisoned, exiled,
his works banned and burned, Voltaire's
great popularity
in revolutionary France assured him a final resting
place in the Pantheon
in Paris. One story is that religious extremists
stole his remains and
dumped them in a garbage heap.

"Religion is the art of inspiring mankind with an enthusiam which is designed to divert their attention from the evils with which they are overwhelmed by those who govern them." – Christianity Unveiled, 16.5

Charles
François Dupuis, 1794, Origine
de tous les Cultes ou La Religion universelle (The Origin of All Religious Worship) Astral-mythical
interpretation of Christianity (and all religion). “A
great error is more easily propagated, than a
great truth, because it is easier to believe,
than to reason, and because people prefer the
marvels of romances to the simplicity of history.” Dupuis
destroyed most of his own work because of the
violent reaction it provoked.

Thomas Paine,
1795, The Age of Reason. Pamphleteer who made
the first call for American independence (Common Sense, 1776; Rights of
Man, 1791) Paine poured savage ridicule on the contradictions
and atrocities of the Bible. Like many American revolutionaries
Paine was a deist:

"I
do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish
church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by
the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by
any church that I know of ... Each of those churches
accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part,
I disbelieve them all." – The
Age of Reason.

Robert Taylor, 1828, Syntagma
Of The Evidences Of The Christian Religion; 1829, Diegesis. Taylor
was imprisoned for declaring mythical origins for Christianity. "The
earliest Christians meant the words to be nothing more than a personification
of the principle of reason,
of goodness, or that principle, be it what it may, which may most benefit
mankind in the passage through life.”

David Friedrich Strauss, 1835, The Life of Jesus Critically
Examined. Lutheran vicar-turned-scholar skilfully exposed gospel miracles
as myth and in the process reduced Jesus to a man. It cost
him his career.

Bruno Bauer,
1841, Criticism of the Gospel History of the Synoptics.
1877, Christus und die Caesaren. Der Hervorgang des
Christentums aus dem romischen Griechentum. (in English translation). The original
iconoclast. Bauer contested the authenticity of all the
Pauline epistles (in which he saw the influence of Stoic
thinkers like Seneca) and identified Philo's role in emergent
Christianity. Bauer rejected the historicity of
Jesus himself. "Everything
that is known of Jesus belongs to the world of imagination." As
a result in 1842 Bauer was ridiculed and removed from his
professorship of New Testament theology at Tübingen.

Ralph
Waldo Emerson, 1841, Essays.
One time Trinitarian Christian and former Unitarian
minister held Jesus to be a "true prophet" but that
organised Christianity was an "eastern monarchy"."Our
Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper-societies
are yokes to the
neck."

Ferdinand
Christian Baur, 1845, Paulus,
der Apostel Jesu Christi. German scholar who
identified as "inauthentic" not only
the pastoral epistles, but also Colossians, Ephesians,
Philemon and Philippians (leaving only the four
main Pauline epistles regarded as genuine). Baur
was the founder of the so-called "Tübingen School."

Charles Bradlaugh, 1860, Who Was Jesus Christ? What Did Jesus Teach? Most famous English atheist of the 19th century, founded the National Secular Society and became an MP, winning the right to affirm. Condemned the teachings of Jesus as dehumanizing passivity and disastrous as practical advice. Bradlaugh denounced the gospel Jesus as a myth.

Ernest Renan,
1863, Vie de Jésus (Das Leben Jesu / Life of Jesus). Although trained as a Catholic
priest Renan wasinspiredby German biblical criticism and wrote a popular biography of Jesus which cost him his job (which he later regained). Renanconcluded that the hero of the Christians was a gifted but merely human preacher, persuaded by his followers into thinking he was the messiah.
Renan subsequently wrote a History of the Origins of Christianity in seven volumes.

Sytze Hoekstra, 1871, Principles and Doctrine of the Early Anabaptists. Scholar of the Radical Dutch school, Hoekstra concluded Mark's gospel had no value as a biography of Jesus. [link]

Robert
Ingersoll, 1872, The
Gods. 1879, Some Mistakes of Moses. Illinois orator extraordinaire,
his speeches savaged the Christian religion. "It
has always seemed to me that a being coming from another
world, with a message of infinite importance to mankind,
should at least have verified that message by his own
signature. Is it not wonderful that not one word was
written by Christ?"

Kersey Graves, 1875, The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours.
Pennsylvanian Quaker who saw through to the pagan heart of Christian fabrications,
though rarely cited sources for his far-reaching conclusions.

Allard Pierson,
1879, De Bergredeen andere synoptische
Fragmenten. [link] Theologian, art and literature
historian who identified The Sermon on the
Mount as a collection of aphorisms from
Jewish Wisdom literature.The publication of Pierson's Bergrede was
the beginning of Dutch Radical Criticism.
Not just the authenticity of all the Pauline
epistles but the historical existence of Jesus
himself was called into question.

Abraham Dirk Loman, 1882, "Quaestiones Paulinae," in Theologisch
Tijdschrift. Professor of theology at Amsterdam who said all the epistles
date from the 2nd century. Loman explained Christianity as a fusion
of Jewish and Roman-Hellenic thinking. When he went blind Loman said his
blindness gave him insight into the dark history of the church! [link]

Gerald Massey,
1886, The Historical Jesus and Mythical Christ.
1907, Ancient Egypt-The Light of the World. Another
classic from an early nemesis of the priesthood. British
Egyptologist wrote six volumes on the religion of ancient
Egypt.

Willem
Christiaan van Manen, 1896, Paulus.
Professor at Leiden and most famous of the Dutch Radicals,
a churchman who did not believe in the bodily resurrection
of Jesus Christ. After resisting the argument for many
years van Manen concluded none of the Pauline
epistles were genuine and that Acts was
dependent on the works of Josephus.[link]

Joseph McCabe, 1897, Why
I Left the Church. 1907, The Bible in Europe:
an Inquiry into the Contribution of the Christian Religion
to Civilization. 1914, The Sources of the Morality
of the Gospels. 1926, The Human Origin of Morals. Franciscan monk-turned-evangelical
atheist. McCabe, a prolific writer, shredded many parts
of the Christ legend – "There is no 'figure
of Jesus' in the Gospels. There are a dozen figures" – but
he continued to allow the possibility for an historical
founder..

Albert Schweitzer,1901, The
Mystery of the Kingdom of God. 1906, The Quest of
the Historical Jesus. The famous German theologian
and missionary (35 years in the Cameroons) ridiculed
the humanitarian Jesus of the liberals and at the
same time had the courage to recognize the work of
the Dutch Radicals. His own pessimistic conclusion
was that the superhero had been an apocalyptic fanatic
and that Jesus died a disappointed man.
Famously said those looking for an historical Jesus
merely "found a reflection of themselves."

"The Dutch Radicals did not forget to question, when questioning had gone out of fashion for the rest of theology." – Geschichte der paulinischen Forschung, 108.

Albert Kalthoff, 1902, Das Christus-Problem. 1907, The Rise of Christianity.
Another radical German scholar who identified Christianity as a psychosis.
Christ was essentially the transcendental principle of the Christian community
which aimed at apocalyptic social reform.

Thomas Whittaker, 1904, The Origins of Christianity.
Declared that Jesus was a myth, that the Christian movement began only after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 and that the whole body of New Testament writings date to the second century. How right he was!

Emilio Bossi/Milesbo 1904, Gesù Cristo non è mai esistito (Jesus Christ Never Existed). Bossi was a radical lawyer/journalist ("Milesbo" being his pen-name). Jesus is a concoction from Tanakh and the mystery cults, and Jesus's ethics are a patchwork from Philo and Seneca.

Gerardus Bolland, 1907, De Evangelische Jozua.
Philosopher at Leiden identified the origin of Christianity in an earlier
Jewish Gnosticism. The New Testament superstar is the Old Testament 'son
of Nun', the follower renamed Jesus by Moses. The virgin is nothing but
a symbol for the people of Israel. From Alexandria the "Netzerim" took
their gospel to Palestine.

In 1907
Pope Pius X condemned the Modernists who were "working
within the framework of the Church". Among those denounced and excommunicated was Alfred Loisy (The Gospel and the Church, 1902), Catholic priest and theologian who made the pithy observation "Jesus announced the Kingdom, and it's the Church that came." An anti-Modernist
oath was introduced in 1910, as well as the Confession for children– opening the door for rampant abuse.

Prosper Alfaric (1886-1955) French
Professor of Theology, shaken by the stance of Pius X,
renounced his faith and left the church in 1909 to work
for the cause of rationalism. 1929,Pour Comprendre La Vie De Jésus. 1932, The problem of Jesus and Christian Origins. 2005, Jésus-Christ a-t-il existé? [Jesus: Did he exist?] Alfaric drew attention to Essene antecedents of Christian dogma.

Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian, 1909, The Truth About
Jesus. Is He a Myth?Erstwhile Presbyterian Minister who saw through
the fabrication. "Even in the first centuries the Christians were compelled to resort to forgery to prove the historicity of Jesus."

John
E. Remsburg, 1909, The Christ:
A critical review and analysis of the evidences of
His existence. Gospels rife with contradictions.
Doubtful that Jesus existed and a supernatural Christ
is certainly Christian dogma.

Arthur Drews, 1910, Die Christusmythe (The Christ Myth).
1910, Die Petruslegende (The Legend of St Peter). 1912, The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus. 1924, Die
Entstehung des Christentums aus dem Gnostizismus(The Emergence
of Christianity from Gnosticism). 1926,The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus. Eminent philosopher was Germany's
greatest exponent of the contention that Christ is a myth. The gospels historized
a pre-existing mystical Jesus whose character was drawn from the prophets
and Jewish wisdom literature. The Passion was to be found in the speculations
of Plato.

John Robertson, 1910, Christianity and Mythology.
1911, Pagan Christs. Studies in Comparative Hierology. 1917, The
Jesus Problem. Robertson drew attention to the universality of
many elements of the Jesusstoryline and to pre-Christian
crucifixion rituals in the ancient world. Identified the original Jesus/Joshua
with an ancient Ephraimite deity in the form of a lamb.

Rudolf Bultmann, 1921, The History of the Synoptic Tradition.
1941, Neues Testament und Mythologie. Lutheran theologian
and professor at Marburg University Bultman was the exponent of 'form
criticism' and did much to demythologise the gospels. He identified
the narratives of Jesus as theology served up in the language of myth. Bultmann
observed that the New Testament was not the story of Jesus but a
record of early Christian belief. He argued that the search for an
historical Jesus was fruitless: "We can know almost nothing concerning the life and
personality of Jesus." (Jesus and the Word, 8)

James Frazer,
1922, The Golden Bough. Anthropological interpretation
of man's progress from magic, through religion to science.
Christianity a cultural phenomenon.

Marshall
J. Gauvin, 1922, Did Jesus Christ Really Live? Notable speaker in the Freethought movement questioned the very existence of a Jesus figure.

Paul-Louis Couchoud, 1924, Le mystère
de Jesus. 1926, La Première Edition de St. Paul. 1930, Jesus Barabbas. 1939, The Creation of Christ. Couchoud, a polymath,
espoused an historical Peter rather than an historical
Jesus and argued that the Passion was modelled on the
death of Stephen.

Georg Brandes, 1925, Die Jesus-Sage. 1926, Jesus – A
Myth. Danish scholar identified the Revelation of St
John as the earliest part of the New Testament.

Joseph Wheless, 1926, Is It God's Word? An Exposition
of the Fables and Mythology of the Bible and the Fallacies of Theology.
1930, Forgery in Christianity. American attorney, raised in the
Bible Belt, shredded the biblical fantasy.

Herbert Cutner, 1950, Jesus: God, Man, or Myth? Mythical
nature of Jesus and a summary of the ongoing debate between mythicists and
historicizers. Mythic-only position is continuous tradition,
not novel. Pagan origins of
Christ.

Georges Las Vergnas, 1956, Pourquoi j'ai quitté l'Eglise
romaine Besançon. 1958, Jésus-Christ a-t-il existé? [link] Vicar general of the diocese of Limoges who lost his faith. Argues that the central figure of Christianity had no historical existence.

Georges Ory, 1961, An Analysis
of Christian Origins. French scholar concluded "Jesus-Christ was not a human Messiah." [link].

John Allegro, 1970, The
Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. 1979, The Dead Sea
Scrolls and the Christian Myth. Jesus was nothing other
than a magic mushroom and his life an allegorical interpretation
of a drug-induced state. Not jail for Allegro – but
professional ruin.

George Albert Wells, 1971, The Jesus of the Early Christians. 1975, Did Jesus Exist? 1988, The
Historical Evidence for Jesus. 1996, The Jesus Legend. 1998, Jesus
Myth. 1999, Earliest Christianity. 2004, Can We Trust the New Testament? Thoughts on the Reliability
of Early Christian Testimony. 2009, Cutting Jesus Down to Size: What Higher Criticism Has Achieved and Where It Leaves Christianity. Christianity a growth from Jewish Wisdom
literature.Wells remains one of the best known advocates of Jesus mythicism though his later books concede the possible influence of a real preacher via the postulated Q document. [link]

Phyllis Graham, 1974, The Jesus Hoax. The nonexistent godman denounced, this time by one of his former brides – an erstwhile Carmelite nun. [link]

Jean Magne, 1975, Christian Origins, I-II. 1989, III, IV. Logique des Dogmes, Logic of the Sacraments.1993, From Christianity to Gnosis and From Gnosis to Christianity: An Itinerary through the Texts to and from the Tree of Paradise.

Samuel Max Rieser, 1979, The True Founder
of Christianity and the Hellenistic Philosophy. Christianity
started by Jews of the Diaspora and then retroactively
set in pre-70 Palestine. Christianity arrived last, not
first, in Palestine – that's why Christian archeological
finds appear in Rome but not in Judea until the 4th century. [link]

Karlheinz Deschner, 1986-2004, The Criminal History of Christianity, Volumes 1-8. A leading German critic of religion and the Church. In 1971 Deschner was called before a court in Nuremberg, charged with "insulting the Church." [link]

Michael Kalopoulos,
1995, The Great Lie. Greek historian finds
strikingly similar parallels between biblical texts
and Greek mythology. He exposes the cunning, deceitful
and authoritarian nature of religion.

Gerd Lüdemann,
1998, The Great Deception: And What Jesus Really Said
and Did. 2002, Paul: The Founder of Christianity.
2004, The Resurrection Of Christ: A Historical Inquiry. After
25 years of study German professor concluded Paul,
not Jesus, started Christianity. Lüdemann was
expelled from the theology faculty at the University
of Göttingen
for daring to say that the Resurrection was "a pious
self-deception." So much for academic freedom. [link]

Alvar Ellegard, 1999, Jesus One Hundred Years Before
Christ. Christianity seen as emerging from the Essene Church of
God with the Jesus prototype the Teacher of Righteousness. [link]

Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy,
1999, The Jesus Mysteries. 2001, Jesus
and the Lost Goddess : The Secret Teachings of
the Original Christians. Examines the close
relationship between the Jesus Story and that
of Osiris-Dionysus. Jesus and Mary Magdalene
mythic figures based on the Pagan Godman and
Goddess.

Harold Liedner, 2000, The Fabrication of the Christ
Myth. Anachronisms and geographic errors of the gospels denounced. Jesus a fictional Joshua for a 1st century Judaic cult and Christianity
one of history's most effective frauds. [link]

Robert Price, 2000, Deconstructing Jesus. 2003 Incredible
Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition? 2011, The Christ Myth Theory and its Problems. Ex-minister
and accredited scholar shows Jesus to be a fictional amalgam of
several 1st century prophets, mystery cult redeemers and gnostic 'aions'. [link]

Hal Childs, 2000, The Myth of the Historical Jesus and
the Evolution of Consciousness. A psychotherapist take on the godman.[link]

Dennis MacDonald, 2000, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark. Professor of New Testament studies and Christian origins maps extensive borrowings from the Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey by the authors of the gospel of Mark and Acts of the Apostles. [link]

Luigi Cascioli, 2001, The Fable of Christ. Indicted
the Papacy for profiteering from a fraud![link]

Israel Finkelstein, Neil Silbermann, 2002, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. Courageous archaeologists who skillfully proved the sacred foundational stories of Judaism and Christianity are bogus. [link]Frank R. Zindler, 2003, The Jesus
the Jews Never Knew: Sepher Toldoth Yeshu and the Quest
of the Historical Jesus in Jewish Sources. No evidence
in Jewish sources for the phantom messiah. [link]

Daniel
Unterbrink, 2004, Judas the Galilean.
The Flesh and Blood Jesus. Parallelsbetween
the tax rebel of 6 AD and the phantom of the Gospels
explored in detail. 'Judas is Jesus'.
Well, part
of Jesus, no doubt.[link]

Tom
Harpur, 2005, The Pagan Christ:
Recovering the Lost Light. Canadian New Testament
scholar and ex-Anglican priest re-states the ideas
of Kuhn, Higgins and Massey. Jesus is a myth and all
of the essential
ideas of Christianity originated in Egypt. [link]

Joseph Atwill, 2005, Caesar's Messiah:
The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus. Another take
on the Josephus-Gospel similarities. Atwill argues that
the
1st century conquerors of Judaea,
Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, used Hellenized Jews to
manufacture the "Christian" texts in order to
establish a peaceful alternative to militant Judaism. Jesus was Titus Flavius? I
don't think so. [link]

Michel Onfray, 2005, Traité d'athéologie (2007 In
Defence of Atheism) French philosopher argues for a
positive atheism, debunking an historical Jesus along the
way. [link]

Kenneth Humphreys, 2005, Jesus
Never Existed. Book of this website. Draws together
the most convincing expositions for the supposed
messianic superhero. The author sets this exegesis within
the socio-historical context of an evolving, malevolent
religion. [link]

Jay Raskin, 2006, The
Evolution of Christs and Christianities. Academic
and erstwhile filmaker Raskin looks beyond the official
smokescreen of Eusebius and finds a fragmented Christ movement
and a composite Christ figure, crafted from several literary
and historical characters. Speculates that the earliest
layer of myth-making was a play written by a woman called
Mary. Maybe. [link]

Thomas L. Thompson,
2006, The Messiah
Myth. 2012, Is this not the Carpenter? (Ed.). Theologian, university don and historian of
the Copenhagen school who concludes Jesus and David are
both amalgams of Near Eastern mythological themes originating
in the Bronze Age. [link]

Jan Irvin, Andrew Rutajit, 2006, Astrotheology and Shamanism: Unveiling the Law of Duality in Christianity and other Religions. Explores astrotheology and shamanism and vindicates John Allegro's work with psychoactive substances. [link]

Lena Einhorn, What Happened on the Road to Damascus? (2006). Swedish historian and proponent of the theory that Paul was the founder of Christianity and that "Jesus" was actually Paul. [link]

René Salm, The Myth of Nazareth (2008). Scholar who primarilly focuses on deconstructing the claims for a historical Nazareth – and does so very effectively. [link]

Thomas Brodie, 2012. Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: A Memoir of a Discovery.. Priest and former director of the Dominican Biblical Centre, Ireland concludes "Jesus did not exist as a historical individual" and is a literary reworking of the account of Elijah and Elisha. [link]

Richard Carrier, 2012. Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. 2014, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason To Doubt. Erstwhile editor of Internet Infidels and activist for atheism argues for the use of Bayes' Theorem as a way out of the befuddled mess that besets Jesus studies. Carrier establishes that probability favours the non-existence of Jesus. The alternative? A figure first conceive as a celestial being revealed through private revelation and scripture, written into allegory and subsequently misunderstood as a literal truth. In fact, just what mythicists have been saying for years but elegantly and comprehensively presented.[link]

Raphael Lataster, 2013.There Was No Jesus, There Is No God.
Religious studies scholar at the University of Sydney puts his head above the parapet. This former fundamentalist Christian concludes from the spurious evidence, Bayesian reasoning, and rigorous logic that the historical Jesus never existed. [link]

Sid Martin, 2014, Secret of the Savior. Jesus as a cypher for Israel? Not a new idea but skilfully presented here by Sid Martin, who analyses the gospel of Mark with the thesis that not a man but Jewish history was his source. [link]

Church
organisation, authority and membership preceded
rather than followed the justifying doctrine. As
the organisation and its needs changed so has the ‘Testament
of God’ adapted accordingly.Dogma –The
Word in all its Savage Glory